Program in Jewish Culture & Society

2011-2012 Newsletter

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Program in Jewish Culture & Society 1

Dear Friends,

Edited by Matti Bunzl • Designed by New Catalogue aplomb. He will also have the help of the Studies and another guest from Rutgers. Produced for the Program in Jewish Culture & Society • © 2011 by the University of Illinois Gary Porton Fund, created by Gary’s for- What a list – and there will be more! mer student Doug Hoffman to support the work of his successor. I invite you to learn As I say every year, everything we do is more about our wonderful new colleague in made possible by our friends and donors. the profile in this newsletter. The faculty we hire, the courses we teach, the public lectures we organize, the work- We are also continuing to bring some shops we convene – the entire presence of the most inspiring figures in Jewish of Jewish Studies at Illinois – it all comes Studies and the world of Jewish arts and from the support of our contributors. culture to campus. We do every year; but We want to thank all of our friends who 2011/12 is especially rich, with visits by continue to give with such generosity. We high-powered Israeli writers Ron Leshem simply couldn’t do our work without them. and Eshkol Nevo in the fall and an entire conference on contemporary Israeli If you are interested in becoming a friend literature – organized by Rachel S. Harris of the Program, please don’t hesitate to

After another banner year, we are looking and bringing together writers, critics, and get in touch with me at bunzl@illinois. forward to 2011/12 with tremendous scholars – in the spring. In addition, we edu. Even the smallest contribution excitement. will host Azzan Yadin of Rutgers, one of makes a difference! the leading young scholars of Rabbinics;

First off, we are thrilled to welcome a new Harvard’s Susan Suleiman, one of the colleague: Dov Weiss, a specialist in the most innovative scholars of Holocaust history of biblical interpretation, rabbinic representation; Ilan Troen of Brandeis, a Matti Bunzl literature, and Jewish thought. Dov, who key figure in the emerging field of Israel just received his Ph.D. from the University Studies; Stanford’s brilliant Israeli German- of Chicago where he studied with Michael ist Amir Eshel; NYU’s Hasia Diner, one of Fishbane, will join the Religion Department the foremost historians of American Jewry; Director, Program in Jewish Culture & Society in the position formerly held by Gary Por- leading Eastern European Jewish historian Professor, Department of Anthropology ton. So Dov has big shoes to fill – but we Steven Zipperstein (also of Stanford); and know that he will do so with tremendous Yael Zerubavel, another key figure in Israel 2 Program in Jewish Culture & Society • Research Research • Program in Jewish Culture & Society 3

EUGENE AVRUTIN ON HIS NEW BOOK JEWS AND THE IMPERIAL STATE: IDENTIFICATION POLITICS IN TSARIST RUSSIA

Much like their tions. A central argument of the book of an administrative effort to manage so- indirect practices of social control, Jews The answers to these and many similar of a legal-administrative order capable of western and is that documentary records played a cieties, refashion populations, and create were subject to an astonishing number of questions grew more ambiguous as the accommodating the empire’s remarkable central European crucial, if often overlooked, role in the a transparent social order. Beginning with laws regulating their precise movement, Russian government began to restructure juridical distinctions and confessional counterparts, construction, manipulation, and eventual the reign of Nicholas I, the imperial state residence, and career paths. the social and economic order of the diversity, the ordering of clear and distinct imperial Russian unraveling of the empire. The challenges began to gradually shift its administrative empire. The modernization projects of the cultural boundaries between Jews and administrators, of determining who was Jewish and focus from ruling territories and communi- Until the middle of the nineteenth century Great Reform era created new profes- non-Jews, and the containment of Jews in journalists, and where Jews were provide a window onto ties to managing populations. The admin- Jewish collective identity continued to re- sional and entrepreneurial classes, laying their permanent places of residence. police officials ex- the broader process by which the tsarist istrative, fiscal, and linguistic demands main stable, even if Russian Jewry consti- the foundations for the technologies that pressed concerns regime attempted to fashion a sufficiently of governing an ethnically diverse and tuted a diverse population divided along made travel accessible and affordable. about the problem of knowing exactly unified social order capable of accom- territorially expansive empire, however, religious, linguistic, and cultural lines. The construction of the railroad played who was Jewish. In the Russian Empire, modating imperial diversity and the actual, impeded the state from making a suc- Travelers, police officials, and journal- an important in the development of however, these discussions centered everyday practices of administration. In cessful transition to a national model. As ists who visited the western borderlands commerce and industry in cities such not only on the dilemma of recognizing particular, Jews and the Imperial State one of the most undergoverned states in spoke of the distinct “Jewish” look of the as Warsaw, Moscow, Odessa, Kiev, St. Jews visually, as they usually did in the provides a case study of how one imperial all of Europe, Russia ruled its popula- hundreds of small market towns. While Petersburg, and Ekaterinoslav, all of West, but also on the more widespread population, the Jews, shaped the world in tions through the mediation of religious Jews could be easily identified visually which attracted sizable Jewish migrant imperial anxieties of identifying Jews which they lived by negotiating with what personnel and institutions, even as it as a collective group or defined in legal populations. The expansion of travel and by documentary records. The practice were often perceived as contradictory and attempted to establish universal admin- terms (by law, anyone who converted the emergence of consumerism fostered of identifying Jews by passports, vital highly restrictive laws and institutions. istrative practices common to all civil from Judaism to Christianity ceased to the cross-fertilization of tastes, fashions, statistics records, censuses, and other statuses and religious groups. In this sys- be a Jew), authorities found it much more behaviors, and forms of conduct and documentary records was tied to the In the Russian Empire, the preoccupation tem of government, which simultaneously challenging to document Jews as individu- appearances. Jews flocked to these and growth and development of government with techniques of government based on relied on the more direct techniques of als. In the second half of the nineteenth many other cities in search of higher institutions, the creation of elaborate the power of numbers emerged as part population management as well as the century, the challenges of identification forms of secular education, professional record-keeping procedures, the preserva- grew more problematic. Not only were opportunities, and social experiences. Eugene M. Avrutin is Assistant Professor of tion of these documents in accessible Jewish population statistics notoriously By around 1900, as an unprecedented modern European Jewish history and Tobor archives, and the challenge of identifying unreliable, but more important, the cat- number of Jews traveled throughout the family scholar in the Program of Jewish every person in the empire. At a time egories used by government administra- empire by way of a vast network of paved Culture and Society at the University of Illinois. when the imperial Russian state placed tors failed to capture unambiguously who and unpaved roads and railroad lines, Jews and the Imperial State: Identification Poli- increasing trust in the power of paper to was Jewish. Should Jews be defined as in the process adapting to the news tics in Tsarist Russia was published by Cornell govern its vast territories and communi- a social estate, a religious community, a tastes and fashions of the day, it became University Press in 2010. Together with Harriet ties, Jews appeared invisible in the public distinctive race, or perhaps an ethnic increasingly difficult to know who was Murav, he has also edited Photographing eye by continually defying conventional corporation? Did the individuals who Jewish and where Jews were. the Jewish Nation: Pictures from S. An-sky’s criteria of administrative classification. had converted to Russian Orthodoxy, Ethnographic Expeditions (2009), which was a Catholicism, or Protestantism lose their A central premise of the book is that finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Jews and the Imperial State explores one Jewishness, as the law instructed? How three particular factors – all of which the visual arts category. of the fundamental arenas of imperial could administrators keep track of an were linked to the state’s efforts to fash- statecraft – the techniques by which the individual whose passport read Russian ion a more direct relationship with the Russian government ruled its popula- Orthodox but whose ethnoreligious origin population – created difficulties in iden- Tsar Nicholas I was marked Jewish? tifying individual Jews: the construction 4 Program in Jewish Culture & Society • Research Research • Program in Jewish Culture & Society 5

HARRIET MURAV DISCUSSES HER NEW BOOK survived Hitler and Stalin and saw their issues, including the questions of how work published after World War 2. the state inscribes itself on the bodies MUSIC FROM A SPEEDING TRAIN: I discuss Shmuel Halkin, Shire Gorsh- of its citizens, how gender relates to nar- man, Moshe Altman, and Itsik Kipnis. ratives of foundation, and how literature testifies to atrocity. These works disturb JEWISH LITERATURE IN POST-REVOLUTION RUSSIA A central misapprehension about our ideas about the Jewish past; reading In a speech given force. The story does not end, however, delshtam’s writing reveals a secular but literature from the Soviet Union, whether them attentively expands and unsettles in Warsaw in at mid-century, but continues in the 60s nonetheless Jewish temporal orientation: authored by Jews or not, is that it lacks our model of the Jewish literary imagina- 1930, the Yiddish and 70s, when Yiddish and Russian his exploration of the fractured chronol- artistic interest. There is no point reading tion, particularly in relation to Yiddish. In writer David Ber- translations of Yiddish resumed publica- ogy of his epoch, his repulsion from and anything written in Soviet Yiddish or in contrast to the dominant scholarship that gelson said that tion, and extends through the turn of the subsequent attraction to the Jewish past, Russian after the 1920s, because from claims there was little artistic representa- literature from 21st century, as Russian Jewish authors and his renunciation of contemporane- 1934 on, socialist realism was the only tion of the Nazi genocide in the Soviet the Soviet Union craft new works. ity put him in the same orbit of thought officially tolerated doctrine in all the arts. Union, I demonstrate the scope and

was like a sym- as authors who knew classic Yiddish Isaac Babel Many critics repeat Stalin’s dictum about power of the Soviet Jewish response to phony orchestra Music from a Speeding Train is a work literature and whose religious upbringing Soviet “national cultures as being ‘na- the killings that took place under Ger- playing on an express train. Those stand- of restoration, an attempt to recover enabled them to see the destruction of Most of the authors I discuss, with the tional in form, socialist in content.” The man occupation, focusing in particular ing on the platform hear the “interrupted, Jewish literature and culture from the their own era in light of ancient Jewish exception of Babel, Mandelshtam, and forced marriage of national form and so- on work published in Russian and Yid- incomplete sounds” as the train passes Soviet Union, in order to tell a story history. Writing in the early Soviet era, Grossman, are unknown to the English- cialist content produced a wide range of dish in the 1940s. and want to catch it. The train was com- long overshadowed by the teleology of Mandelshtam came to see his own language audience. New translations results, including some which subverted monly used as a symbol of progress at “hope to ashes.” The recovery does not present moment as an after-effect of ca- from Yiddish and new anthologies of the socialist project. The only works that this time, but splitting the perspective depend on a trip to archives closed until tastrophe. After the catastrophic violence Russian-Jewish literature in English have that were strictly “socialist in content and between those on it and those not was 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. of the twentieth century and the hope changed the picture somewhat. None- national in form” were birthday greetings unique to Bergelson. He framed the The recovery depends rather on the act and delusion of the Soviet project, what theless, the undeserved obscurity of to Stalin, translations of Marx and Lenin question of the Jewish reader’s response of reading. My readings situate Isaac still remains is the trace left by the text, many of the writers in this study stems into Yiddish, etc. to Soviet literature as a physics problem, Babel, David Bergelson, Mandelshtam, which must be considered in its histori- not only from linguistic obstacles. The the difference between the source and Perets Markish, Leyb Kvitko, Der Nister, cal context, but cannot be reduced to a long term consequences of the cold war Entering the world of Jewish literature the observer and the effect of relative Semen Gekht, Itsik Kipnis, Il’ia Erenburg, mere reflection of it, or to a repository of have led many scholars to accept the from the Soviet Union, readers may motion on sound (the Doppler Effect). Emmanuel Kazakevich, Vasilii Grossman, identity markers, the author’s biography, or lachrymose view of Soviet Jewry, and expect to find themselves in a remote In so doing Bergelson suggests the Semen Lipkin, Il’ia Selvinskii, Fridrikh the reigning political doctrine of the time its corollary, in the oft-quoted line “Hitler backwater, in an ancient grandmotherly fundamental paradox underlining Soviet Gorenshtein, Shire Gorshman, Dina (which the author may support or oppose). killed the readers and Stalin killed the apartment infused with the smell of culture: its actors are always too early or Kalinovskaia, Dina Rubina, Alexandr writers.” This view needs revision. Jews mothballs, decorated with sofas draped too late for their bright future. It continu- Melikhov, Inna Lesovaia, and other au- and secular Jewish culture in Yiddish and in plastic slipcovers, busts of Lenin, ally eludes them. For those left behind thors in the same literary universe in Russian were not the particular target of dishes of hard candies so old that their on the platform, the train of progress only which modernism and socialist realism, negative government campaigns in the flavors would be indistinguishable, and piles up disaster. Jewish literature in Rus- revolution and catastrophe, as well as 20s; Jews lost their lives in the purges enveloped by the “gentle aroma of decay,” Harriet Murav is Professor of Comparative sian and Yiddish from the Soviet century traditional Jewish writings, including the of the 30s, but were not uniquely singled as in Gedali’s shop. What I discovered, Literature and Slavic Languages and Litera- is in both places at once, on the rushing Hebrew Bible, liturgy, and classic rabbinic out as Jews, although Jewish cultural in contrast, was an intensely vibrant tures at Illinois and a member of the Executive express train and on the platform, contem- texts provide the framework for creativity. institutions, like those of other nationali- literature, violent and erotic, earthy and Committee of the Program in Jewish Culture & plating the bodies that lie in its wake. ties, were targeted. Yiddish and Jewish- prophetic, expressing searing pain and Society. She is the author of Holy Foolishness: The Soviet century, for all its empha- oriented literature flourished during savage irony, bitter humor, and in active Dostoevsky’s Novels & the Poetics of Cultural The story of Russian-Jewish and Soviet sis on construction and mobilization, the war against Hitler. Stalin murdered dialogue with its time and place. These Critique (1992), Russia’s Legal Fictions (1998), Yiddish literature in the 20th century also gave rise to the re-invention of a Mandelshtam and Babel, the Yiddish works are not merely vessels of an obso- and Identity Theft: The Jew in Imperial Russia remains largely untold. Most versions backward glancing Jewish temporality. actors Solomon Mikhoels and Veniamin lete ideology, of value only as historical and the Case of Avraam Uri Kovner (2003). In end the story in the late 30s, or in 1952, During his interrogation David Bergelson Zuskin, and the Yiddish writers Bergelson, documents. On the contrary, they are 2006/07, she received a Guggenheim fellow- when leading Yiddish authors were shot. described the power of Biblical images, Der Nister, Leyb Kvitko, David Hofshteyn, hauntingly beautiful, emotionally compel- ship for Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Many critics insist that what was pub- especially the destructions of the Temple, Markish, Shmuel Persov, and Itsik Fefer, ling, and philosophically engaged, “good Literature in Post-Revolution Russia, which was David Bergelson lished after the twenties was the result of commemorated on the 9th of Av. Man- but many other Yiddish writers of note to think with” in relation to current critical published by Stanford University Press in 2011. 6 Program in Jewish Culture & Society • Students Faculty • Program in Jewish Culture & Society 7 Meet Our Students – BRIAN DOLBER academy affords all those who enter it the tion but only as their transmitters. In this book as a Stroock Fellow at the Harvard opportunity to uncover the beauty and maj- way, the sages remove themselves from University Center for Jewish Studies. My for Hegemonic Jewishness, 1919-1941” language newspapers shut their doors. esty of a religious tradition (as well as its the picture and place the responsibility research will seek to show how these in the Department of Communication “While the Forward began as a worker pitfalls) without requiring one to commit to for these bold moral critiques of God onto daring confrontations with God presented at Illinois in an effort to address these newspaper in Yiddish,” says Dolber, “it any specific religious institution or doctrine. various biblical heroes. By way of exegesis, in my dissertation are part of a larger pressing issues. He argues that organic increasingly came to articulate itself as Appropriately, questions of faith are left the sages shield themselves against any rabbinic project to invert the standard intellectuals within the Jewish labor a ‘Jewish’ newspaper, as Vladeck hoped outside of the classroom. Thus, as the uni- claims of religious irreverence or theologi- hierarchical relationship between God movement, who understood the impor- to convince advertisers that Jews could versity contains within its walls the most cal subversiveness, while at the same time and the righteous. Moshe Halbertal has tance of newspapers, broadcasting and be good consumers, obfuscating the open and free environment to engage in exegesis allows them to express their already noted that in rabbinic literature culture, developed a variety of strategies journals original political leanings. In the the critical and historical study of religion, I deepest moral values and concerns. For (as opposed to the Hebrew Bible), God to ensure the maintenance of a left-wing meantime, the newspaper ran more and eagerly – though not easily – left the world the sages, ethics does not simply flow often assumes, strikingly, the weaker Jewish identity through the 1920s, while more like a business, creating dissent of a traditional Yeshiva to embark on a from the Bible, but also emerges out of a party in the human-divine analogy: God helping to build a national labor move- among its workforce and audience.” career in academia. profound crisis with the biblical God. becomes the metaphorical wife, daughter, ment by the 1930s. debtor, defendant, slave etc. Inversely, Others in the Jewish labor movement Under the guidance of Michael Fishbane While my primary area of scholarly humans assume the more powerful Dolber pays particular attention to the – what Dolber refers to as a “counter- and Paul Mendes-Flohr, I received my doc- research and expertise has been rabbinic role of husband, father, judge, master Yiddish-language Socialist newspaper public,” drawing from the work of Nancy torate from the University of Chicago this thought and literature (Talmud and Mi- etc. Building on Halbertal, my work will The extraordinary transformations in the Der Forverts (Forward), radio station Fraser and Michael Warner – responded past June. Funded in part by the Martin drash), I will also be offering general and attempt to demonstrate how these power U.S. economy, immigration patterns, and WEVD, and the newspapers and cultural to the shift at Der Forverts critically. Marty Center for the Advanced Study specific courses at the University in He- inversions appear in non-metaphorical media system pose serious questions activities of the Amalgamated Clothing Leaders such as Jacob Salutsky and of Religion, my dissertation, entitled brew Bible, Medieval Jewish Philosophy, texts as well, including the special ability about how working class and ethnic Workers of America (ACWA) and the Fannia Cohn worked to bring highly “Confrontations with the Divine in Late Jewish Mysticism, and Modern Jewish of the righteous to assuage God’s anger, communities might use media in their International Ladies’ Garment Workers democratic approaches to media, worker Rabbinic Literature,” sought to provide Thought. In this regard, I look forward to the right of the righteous to defy (or struggles for a more democratic society. Union (ILGWU). Baruch Charney Vladeck, education, and cultural production into an original contribution to the history of teaching both general thematic surveys threaten to defy) God’s wishes, and the Gendell Family and Shiner Family Fellow the business manager at Der Forverts, their unions. In addition, the advent of ra- theology and its ongoing transformations in English as well as specific Jewish texts ability of the righteous to make demands Brian Dolber has recently completed his developed sophisticated methods of dio broadcasting offered new possibilities in rabbinic thought. I analyzed the under- in their primary language. I love teaching of God or to overrule His decisions. By dissertation “Sweating for Democracy: attracting advertisers, helping to keep for Jewish, labor and socialist causes. examined motif of humans confronting and have done so for many years. In positing these theologies, the ancient Working Class Media and the Struggle the newspaper afloat while other foreign- God in rabbinic literature (writings of the 2007, I offered an introductory course in sages empower the righteous in ways Talmud and Midrash from the second Jewish Thought at the University of Illinois that go far beyond anything we encounter to eight century CE). It highlighted how at Chicago and this past spring I led a in the Hebrew Bible. At the same time, MEET OUR NEW FACULTY MEMBER – DOV WEISS rabbinic sages do not, for the most part, seminar course on Ancient Jewish Theol- the ancient sages, in other contexts, confront God directly but indirectly by ogy at Northwestern University. imagine a disempowered God who is placing moral critiques of God into the bound by Torah law and “enchained with This fall, I am thrilled to be joining the My interest in pursuing a career in mouths of various biblical characters. I am very eager to begin my work at Israel in exile.” My research at Harvard faculty at the University of Illinois as an academic Jewish Studies emerged out Rewriting a biblical narrative where no the University. I have already met and will seek to understand these stunning Assistant Professor in the Department of an intense desire to engage ancient combative encounter appears, the sages exchanged e-mails with many faculty power reversals by looking at the social, of Religion and the Program in Jewish Jewish texts on their own terms – rather produce dozens of dialogical confronta- members from the Department of Reli- cultural and historical contexts of Pales- Culture & Society. My area of specialty is than through the interpretive lens of a tions between a biblical hero and God. To gion and the Program in Jewish Culture & tinian Jewry from the 3rd to 7th c. More the history of Jewish theology and Jewish specific traditional hermeneutic. While the accomplish this, the sages do not merely Society and have been so impressed with specifically, I will ask to what extent this biblical interpretation in the Byzantine religious schools of my youth taught me rewrite the biblical narrative anew, but the caliber of their scholarship and with phenomenon is related to Peter Brown’s period. I am particularly honored to be how to read and translate sacred Jewish they also exegetically anchor the conten- their genuine friendliness and excitement claim of the emergence of the “Holy Man” assuming a position formerly held by Gary texts, and instilled in me a love of these tious encounter back onto the very words to welcome me into their ranks. In my first in 5th and 6th century Byzantium. I will Porton, a renowned scholar of post-biblical writings, the academic world offered me a of Scripture. Throughout this work, I ar- semester at the University, I will be teach- also consider whether this fantasy of Judaism, who taught at the University for unique environment wherein no interpre- gued that these exegetical confrontations ing two courses: History of Judaism (RLST human power might be an unconscious 35 years and who, together with Michael tive tradition would a priori be privileged. provide a safe space for the sages to ex- 120) and Jewish Sacred Texts (RLST 283). method by which the rabbis empower Shapiro, helped found the Program in Jew- Multiple methodologies would not only press their own moral struggles with the a disempowered people living under ish Culture & Society in 1981. be tolerated but embraced; all types of biblical God as they present themselves In Spring 2012, I will be taking a se- adverse social and political conditions in questions could be raised. Moreover, the not as originators of the moral confronta- mester leave of absence to work on my Christian Byzantium. 8 Program in Jewish Culture & Society • Events Events • Program in Jewish Culture & Society 9

Some Highlights of 2010/11

Alon Confino (second from right) with Program in Jewish Culture & Society Faculty Journalist Bernard Avishai of Jerusalem in a moment of heated discus- Members Brett Kaplan, Peter Fritzsche, and Michael Rothberg. Confino, Professor at the sion with Program in Jewish Culture & Society faculty member Dara Gold- University of Virginia and one of the leading historians of Germany, visited in April 2011 at man and Schusterman Visiting Israeli Professor Rhona Seidelman. the invitation of the Program’s Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies Initiative. He Avishai came to Illinois in the first week of February 2011, giving us a preview lectured to a packed house on “The Third Reich of Emotions” and took part in a workshop of his widely discussed New York Times Magazine cover story “A Plan for with faculty and graduate students. Peace that Still Could Be.”

Gennady Estraikh with Program in Jewish Culture & Society faculty member Harriet Murav. Estraikh, a Professor of Yiddish at NYU, visited Illinois in November 2010 to discuss “Anti-Nazi Rebellion in Peretz Markish’s Drama and Prose.” Sarah Abrevaya Stein, pictured with Program in Jewish Culture & Society faculty members Eugene Avrutin and Brett Kaplan. Stein, the Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies and Professor of His- tory at UCLA, visited in September 2010 to deliver the annual Einhorn Lecture in which she spoke on “Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce.” The event was followed by a Jewish Studies Workshop discussing her essay “Jews and European Imperialism.”

At the end of January 2011, we welcomed Sidra Ezrahi of Hebrew University. The pioneering scholar of Holocaust literature, pictured here with Program in Jewish Culture & Society faculty members Michael Rothberg and Brett Kaplan, came to Illinois under the auspices of the Israel Studies Project. During her time on campus, she gave a public lecture reflecting on her career, “To Write Poetry After Auschwitz is Barbaric: Three Decades Among the Barbarians.” She also gave a workshop presentation on “Europe, Israel, and America in the Twentieth Century: The Global Theatre of Jewish Tragedy, Epic, and Comedy.”

In September 2010, Michael Rothberg, faculty member in the Program in Jewish Culture & Society and Direc-

tor of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies Judith Halberstam, Professor of English at the University of Initiative, travelled to Leeds to give the keynote at a Southern California, visited Illinois in October of 2010. One conference inspired by his 2009 book Multidirectional of the leading queer theorists in the American academy, she Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of presented her first forays into Jewish and Holocaust Studies, Decolonization. a lecture titled “The Killer in Me is the Killer in You: Homosex- uality and Fascism” and a workshop paper “’Like a Pelican Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen, one of the power couples of Israeli culture, visited Illinois for two in the Wilderness’: The Afterlife of the Kindertransport.” The weeks at the beginning of the academic year as part of the Israel Studies Project. During their latter is an engagement with the history of her father, math- memorable time, they gave lectures and readings, participated in workshops and seminars, and ematician and Illinois emeritus professor Heini Halberstam. visited countless classes, both in Champaign and Chicago. A particular highlight was the screening Judith and Heini are pictured in the Jewish Studies Office of Jellyfish, the artists’ film and winner of the Camera d’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, with anthropologist Ed Bruner (left). before a standing-room only crowd at Hillel’s Cohen Center. Etgar and Shira are pictured here with Program in Jewish Culture & Society faculty member Rachel S. Harris. In March of 2011, the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies convened a conference titled “Anni- hilation, Archive, Autobiography: Networks of Testimony in German-Occupied Europe.” The two-day event featured a

In October of 2010, Samuel Fleischacker, Professor of Philosophy and keynote lecture by Samuel Kassow (Trinity College), the author of Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, Director of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive. Pictured here are the participants in the conference. Front row visited Champaign to discuss his book-in-progress Divine Teaching and the from left: Arkadi Zeltser (Yad Vashem), Elena Jakel (Illinois), Amy Simon (Indiana University), Rachel Brenner Way of the World: A Defense of Revealed Religion. (University of Wisconsin at Madison), Harriet Murav (Illinois), Brett Kaplan (Illinois). Back row: Marek Srota (Illinois), Samuel Kassow, Marcus Moseley (Northwestern University), Michael Rothberg (Illinois). 10 Program in Jewish Culture & Society • Research Research • Program in Jewish Culture & Society 11

depiction of the degenerate, war is.” Fur- themselves consistent with ideas of mod- tan spectacles. We see Franz constantly ther along, “one more picture.” It depict- ern individuality. The day-by-day entries of on the move, browsing, breezing, picking PETER FRITZSCHE ABOUT HIS LATEST BOOK ed “a war invalid who wants to tenderly the diary contrast with a memoir that Göll up a pound of apples, plums, or cherries draw his wife to him with his prosthetic wrote inside the diary. The diary tracks from a fruit cart on the corner, drinking a THE TURBULENT WORLD OF FRANZ GÖLL: AN ORDINARY arms. He awkwardly places his artificial Göll’s inability to achieve what he thought mug of beer or a glass of “Weisse mit,” arm outfitted with a claw hook around his was his call to “genius.” Instead of living Berlin’s favorite sour beer with raspberry BERLINER WRITES THE TWENTIETH CENTURY wife. From their expressions, it is obvious life, he withdrew to report on it. His diary syrup, stopping off at a café for coffee, that this caress is not regarded as a came to serve as a place for Göll to grabbing some chocolate or a roll of When I first equivalent of the USA’s Route 66), which the Darwinian notion of “the struggle moment of bliss, but as a painful disap- register the discrepancies between his mints at a Tabak, and bringing home to found the traverses Berlin. This is the metropolitan for survival.” On the one hand, he was pointment over a happiness that is gone ambitions and the deeds he in fact car- his mother a slice of “gingerbread” from sprawling diary broadway where Marlene Dietrich, who is burdened by the necessity to “make” his forever.” This sort of empathy did not ried out, between the call to genius and the pastry shop. in a Berlin ar- almost an exact contemporary, grew up, way alone in the world by developing the circulate widely in the Third Reich. To be the absence of any outward confirmation chive, I wasn’t where Franz scouted his first love, Klara skills to find a job, to acquire a girl friend, sure, Franz was not an ordinary twentieth- of such a calling. Throughout the diary, In the end, the diary exposes the scars quite sure what Wasko, and where he searched for jobs to negotiate city streets. On the other hand, century German man: he never served in Franz Göll reveals himself to be an object of the struggle to survive the twentieth- to make of and posed as a dandy. If Franz Göll never he revelled in the possibility of fashion- the army in either world war and perhaps who cannot make his way in the world. century, but reveals as well the rich it. It was full moved, world history moved through ing himself in a highly mobile, if turbulent for this reason had little feeling for Ger- souvenirs amassed in experiencing it. It of insight, but him: from his perch on Rossbachstrasse, consumer society. Both the solitude and man nationalism or German patriotism. By contrast, the memoir, written between becomes a kaleidoscope in which, by littered with he witnessed the German Revolution in the freedom of the individual became As a child, he preferred to play with dolls 1941 and 1948, is the product of a turns, readers see the different selves of self-pity. Political reportage on the terrible 1918, the rise of the Nazis in 1933, the fundamental twentieth-century experiences, rather than soldiers. confident amateur historian who uses Franz Göll and the open-ended opportuni- drama of twentieth-century German history pogrom against the Jews in 1938, the and Göll wrote perceptively about each. In background and agency to render an ties and dangers of twentieth-century life. often yielded to inflexible Social Darwin- bombing of Berlin and the rape of his this sense, he took up the characteristic Even so, the diary reveals how anti- active subject whose life has consider- Unauthorized, the diary is also unauthori- ism, astrology combined with astronomy, neighbors in the last years of World War twentieth-century practice of making a Semitism seeped into German life. In ably more purpose and coherence (and tative and therefore particularly telling. aphorisms traded places with diatribes II, and the frightening prospect of nuclear case study – of himself, which is one of his the early 1920s, Göll totally rejected fun) than the diaries indicate. As a self- against women, self-laceration gave way to annihilation after 1945. Yet the diary is motivations for keeping the diary. prejudice against Jews since he felt that conscious historical observer, Franz the self-exculpation. Hitler, Stalin, Marx, Freud also cluttered with the musing of a lone- Germans should not divide against each memoirist gives a robust account of his were all in the mix as well. some man: a solitary child, he played Göll’s somewhat unforgiving Darwinism other. But by the end of the decade, he life and times. He deliberately avoids the horsey and whipped himself; linkisch or came from his study of nature; he fulfilled began to refer to “the Jews” and their episodic or ruminative nature of the dia- I knew that the diary was unusual because bumbling, he was too frightened to pick the promise of popular science by read- power and avarice. Indeed, Franz Göll ries. The memoirs bring Franz Göll to life. very few diarists comment on the world up the candy thrown out during party ing Ernst Haeckel and Sigmund Freud, got to anti-Semitism before he got to the Two very different literary approaches across a span of seventy years. Franz Göll showers. Classmates teased him for by building an aquarium, and by keeping Nazis. With the Third Reich, however, Göll – the diary and the memoir – reveal two began writing in 1916, just before his being fit only for a coffin, not a career. An weather logs and star-gazing charts. Yet considered Nazi anti-Semitism to be a di- very different Franz Gölls. Each offers a seventeenth birthday, and he continued avid reader, Göll spent hours in the local Göll tended to see life from the bottom versionary tactic; he believed to see in the rare reflection on the nature and artifice until he died in 1984 – the diary observes library and sometimes thought of himself up. The bumbling boy not surprisingly Nazis “new Jews,” which was not exactly of autobiography. Kaiser Wilhelm as well as Ronald Reagan, as an unrecognized genius who, following sympathized with those who never were an unprejudiced point of view, and he never the Age of Darwin as well as the Age the wildly misogynistic yet widely influential able to press their advantage or make saw the centrality of the Jewish enemy And a third autobiographical genre, the Peter Fritzsche is a Professor in the Depart- of Aquarius. That Göll was an ordinary philosopher Otto Weininger, had chosen “propaganda” for themselves and thus in the pitiless Nazi world view. However, household account books, provide yet ment of History at the University of Illinois, man – a clerk, a publisher’s assistant, a creativity over sex. Very much in the spirit came out short. For this reason, he was Göll did note the murderous aspect of the another vantage point from which to where he also serves on the faculty of the nightwatchman – who lived all his life in of this eugenic age, Göll also prepared ultimately not vulnerable to the Nazis campaign against Jews in July 1941, at a observe the self. They reveal Franz’s Program in Jewish Culture & Society. He is the the same crummy apartment in the “Red biological studies of his family to confirm whom he regarded as ferocious preda- time when most Germans looked away. He daily spending habits during the dramatic author of numerous books, including Rehears- Island,” a well-known Berlin working-class his degeneracy. At one point, he was tors. In one of the most moving passages concluded his observations with the words: years of the Great Inflation (1922/23) als for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobiliza- district made the diary all the more tantaliz- attracted to the Nazis and developed into of the diary, Göll reported on viewing the “Germany awake!” He suspected Germany and the Great Depression (1929/33). His tion in Weimar Germany (1990), Germans into ing. Here was a man who had to make his an anti-Semite before turning against the 1938 Nazi propaganda exhibit on “Degen- would not do so until it was too late. everyday purchases reveal the degree to Nazis (1998), and Life and Death in the Third way in life; he seemed to step right out bullies whom he hated in the public square erate Art,” which he found provocative which an upwardly mobile, though socially Reich (2008). His book The Turbulent World of Hans Fallada’s classic Depression-era as much as he did on the schoolyard. rather than repulsive. Standing in front of The diary’s depiction of the little man, be- uprooted Berliner fashioned a consumer of Franz Göll: An Ordinary Berliner Writes the novel, Little Man, What Now? Otto Dix’s famous triptych on war, Franz leaguered by social change and political “lifestyle” as he outfitted himself with Twentieth Century was published by Harvard A close reading of the diary reveals a Göll made an extraordinary declaration drama, is not quite convincing, however. fedora hats, walking sticks, and cigars University Press in 2011. Franz Göll apprenticed himself to the big portrait of what it felt to live in the twen- that turned the aim of the exhibit on its There are at least three diarists who in- and cigarettes and went to movies, city along Reichsstrasse 1 (Germany’s tieth century. Göll repeatedly deployed head: “The picture is not a bloody-minded habit the diary, multiple selves which are amusement parks, and other metropoli- 12 Program in Jewish Culture & Society • Research Research • Program in Jewish Culture & Society 13

BRETT KAPLAN DISCUSSES HER NEW BOOK LANDSCAPES OF HOLOCAUST POSTMEMORY The genesis of holiday complex. I approached this study It was through studying the Obersalzberg years later, photographed contemporary I have indulged in other reading—often of registered in our increasingly globally Landscapes of the transformation of the Nazi complex that I discovered Lee Miller, an American Germans posing in Nazi uniform. It is Coetzee. Because I was supposed to be connected consciousness? What does it of Holocaust into a lavish hotel via historical interest photographer documenting the fall of the an arc that speaks volumes about the avoiding the Nazi genocide, I was deeply mean that this European event is often Postmemory mixed with fascination and horror. As a Third Reich for Vogue. Because Miller’s transformations in Holocaust representa- suspicious of my own interpretation when used as an interpretive or representation- is closely literary scholar with a focus on Holocaust compelling images resonate powerfully tion from the immediate postwar period I read Coetzee’s Disgrace shortly after al touchstone for genocides and traumas tied with the studies and aesthetics, I had always with explorations of trauma and space, I until the early 2000s. I began to see that its publication in 1999 and discovered internationally? Looking at historically Jewish Studies peered through the victims’ lenses; became a little bit obsessed with her— the Holocaust was appearing the world it to be full of Holocaust references. The and culturally diverse spaces, photo- program at learning the intricate details of Hitler’s with her rich and fascinating life, with over as the emblem par excellence of evil. inevitable return of the repressed: just as graphs, and texts that are all concerned Illinois both life, walking where he walked, scrambling what she represented as a free spirit. I This transformed my vision so that I could I tried to escape the Holocaust, I found with the physical and mental landscape because it was through bushes to find the remains of the began to see that what she was doing see things, read things, in the work of myself absorbed in a text resonating with of the Holocaust and its transformations our director, Matti Bunzl, who introduced house where he lived—none of these are with photography, space, and memory, the South African writer J.M. Coetzee that profound if disturbing traces of the Shoah. from the postwar period to the early twen- me to the photographers whose invita- things I had ever imagined myself doing. was closely linked to a project I had been had previously been largely invisible. And then Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello ap- ty-first century, Landscapes of Holocaust tion to collaborate was the catalyst for On the Jewish side of my family, one working on for some time, Susan Silas’s peared in 2003 and related the story of Postmemory is about the geographical my thinking through space and trauma never uttered the word “Hitler.” If there Helmbrechts Walk. I had discovered Silas Indeed, we all wear our externally molded a difficult and aging woman who cannot and psychological landscapes of the after- that in effect launched this project, but was no way around it, if one absolutely while writing my first book, Unwanted yet curious glasses. The world is colored believe that the world does not recognize effects of the Nazi genocide; it grapples also because most of its chapters were had to speak it aloud, well then one Beauty, in which I discuss some of for each of us by our Joyce, James, the murder and consumption of millions with how space and memory connect, presented at the vibrant Jewish Studies had to spit afterwards. I worried that I her responses to the German painter Shakespeare, postcolonial, gender, queer, upon millions of innocent animals as a and how the Holocaust travels through Workshop that forms the backbone of our was somehow supporting Hitler kitsch Anselm Kiefer’s work. In discussions race, and/or modernist frames. But if crime on the scale of the Nazi genocide. contemporary geographies. On the one program. As ever, the input of the other by literally walking where he had walked, of recent photographic treatments of one were to see the world through my Costello endeavors to enlighten her hand, natural spaces have a tendency to members of the Jewish Studies group imbibing beer and sausages at his Holocaust memory it was Matti (again) eyes one would be fully capable of mis- unseeing fellow humans and utilizes reclaim landscapes; on the other hand, into various aspects of the project has Eagle’s Nest—the whole project made who introduced me to Collier Schorr’s taking the word “drama” for “trauma”; comparisons to the Holocaust as an we have a tendency to build vast monu- been utterly invaluable. Luke Batten and me uncomfortable. But what struck me work; I found her staged representations “dancing” for “Drancy”; and “ask” for emotional battering ram to break through mental structures in order to remember Jon Sadler (aka New Catalogue) asked when we arrived on the Obersalzberg was of young German men posing in Nazi uni- “ash.” After two decades of reading, think- to an indifferent universe. Looking at the traumatic events. A stark contrast always me to travel to Berchtesgaden to medi- that we have not really made sense of form fascinating, disturbing, problematic ing, and researching the subject, the Holocaust in Coetzee’s writing reveals exists between reclamation—spaces tate on the meaning of the conversion of the distance between past and present, in productive ways. From Miller to Schorr Holocaust has been so indelibly seared how the event casts its shadow across moving on, landscapes encroaching— an important fascist site—Hitler’s holiday space and memory. Luke, Jon, and I were is a long road: Miller photographed actual, into my consciousness that I find it global landscapes and how the traumas and memorialization—either in the more retreat, the Berghof—into a five star walking not where genocide occurred but often dead, Nazis and Schorr, some sixty everywhere. Over the years, to escape it, of apartheid and post-apartheid South traditional monumental strain or the more rather where the Nazi elite, those who Africa are influenced by their implicit com- materially and lucratively benefited from parison with the trauma of the Holocaust. genocide, frolicked, consumed, gloated, Our relationship to global complicity, evil, planned, and displayed the glories of shame, and reconciliation is brought into the German war effort. And yet it was focus by reading Coetzee’s work through very hard to make sense of the abyss its Holocaust inflection that is always between the landscape of the 1940s and already there. the landscape of the early 2000s. As I learned more and more about the Ober- After analyzing the space in the Ob- salzberg (for example, that Freud enjoyed sersalzberg that once housed Hitler’s mushrooming there before the war), the “spiritual home” and has now become a complexity of the distance between time lavish hotel, I began to wonder how the yet not space deepened. spaces of the past stay with us through New Catalogue, A. Hitler D. Eckart New Catalogue, A. Hitler D. Eckart New Catalogue, A. Hitler D. Eckart representations. How has the Holocaust New Catalogue, A. Hitler D. Eckart Obersalzberg to Hoher Goll No. 6 Obersalzberg to Hoher Goll No. 11 Obersalzberg to Hoher Goll No. 15 Obersalzberg to Hoher Goll No. 41 14 Program in Jewish Culture & Society • Research 15 Research • Program in Jewish Culture & Society

MICHAEL ROTHBERG, YASEMIN YILDIZ, AND ANDRÉS NADER DISCUSS THEIR RESEARCH PROJECT experimental countermonumental strain. tion two) a sense that Nazi iconography occasionally bubbling up and becoming Yet sometimes monumental structures is ripe for play, or a sense, as evidenced in visible. In his later works, the Holocaust is “CITIZENS OF MEMORY: MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS AND erase rather than commemorate. The ten- Coetzee’s work (section three) that the Ho- powerfully present and is used most often sion between memory and forgetting is locaust can be instrumentalized for other as an analogy convincing enough to convey HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE IN CONTEMPORARY GERMANY” always brightly evident. As the generation causes. Within each section a roughly the horror of killing animals. of survivors shrinks, the cultural weight chronological change can be seen in how of maintaining memory shifts not only to the physical or metaphorical landscape of The emotional access offered through subsequent generations but also in some Holocaust postmemory has changed. the landscapes presented in the texts I In February 2009, more than two hun- although it showcased what conventional it is helpful to have some background. sense to the landscape itself. As Land- study in Landscapes, like most landscape dred immigrant women—most of them wisdom asserts does not exist: Muslim Postwar Germany has been defined by scapes moves through physical spaces The first section, “Burning Landscapes” paintings, invite and seduce, but, precisely Muslims and many wearing head- immigrants who care about the Holocaust the long shadow of the Holocaust, on the crucial to the Third Reich to photographs begins with a description of a place—a because they are anchored in a Holocaust scarves—filled an auditorium in Berlin’s and the German past, engage with it in one hand, and the effects of division and that grapple with representing trauma particularly loaded place to be sure—that context, thwart or disrupt the seductive impoverished Neukölln neighborhood. serious ways, and become themselves reunification, on the other. Memory of to literature that demonstrates the geo- was transformed from Freud’s mushroom appeal of landscape. Like the images in They had come to listen to presentations bearers and transmitters of a historical the Holocaust, in particular, has been un- graphical reach of the Holocaust, the di- hunting grounds to Hitler’s holiday retreat European landscape paintings of pastoral by the Neuköllner Stadtteilmütter—the memory ostensibly not their own. derstood as central to (West) Germany’s versity of means of commemoration (and to a recreation spot for anyone afflu- natural scenes, many of the spaces “Neukölln Neighborhood Mothers”— self-definition as a liberal democracy, and sometimes means of forgetting) comes ent enough to pay. What these physical treated in this project appeal despite the women from their community who work Attending this event in Berlin inspired to European identity more generally. At into focus. Landscapes are aesthetic, changes betray is a transformation in the presence of loss as the overwhelming sen- with an organization dedicated to the us to look further into the ways in the same time, the demographic profile representational, material; by employing psychological landscape which enables sation evoked by these representational social welfare of immigrant families. The which immigrants to Germany engage of Germany has changed radically since the term in the context of discourses on enough forgetting for a commercial and material landscapes. By examining the projects presented by the “Neighborhood with Holocaust memory and to reflect 1945. Today, one in five residents has the after-effects of the Nazi genocide this enterprise to flourish. The second section, intersections of landscape, postmemory, Mothers” did not, however, concern the on the broader implications of these a so-called “migration background,” a book offers a new interpretation of how “Burning Images” begins in the same and trauma this project offers new insights issues of health, nutrition, and education memory acts. We have been fortunate to descriptor applied to such diverse groups space, memory, and the multi-national landscape, this time through an analysis into the effects and uses of the Nazi that the organization had been founded receive an American Council for Learned as labor migrants from Mediterranean reach of the Holocaust intersect. of Lee Miller capturing the conflagration genocide today. to address. Instead, one by one, the Societies (ACLS) Collaborative Research of the Nazi spiritual home at the close of women spoke of the research they had Fellowship for 2011-2012 that allows us While the first two sections begin with the war. The transformation we can see undertaken into Germany’s National to pursue this research in Germany. The World War II, the third section begins in moving through the three photographers I Socialist past. Mobilized by a desire to coauthored book that will result from 1974, just before the mass explosion of discuss in this section echoes the trans- understand the history of the country this research, tentatively titled Citizens discourse about the Holocaust in fiction, formation in the landscape of Hitler’s in which they lived as immigrants or of Memory, will investigate the effects of films and so on that is generally dated to holiday retreat discussed in section one, refugees, they had approached German transnational migration on cultural mem- 1978, the year when the mini-series Holo- from the immediacy and madness of the social workers to find out more about the ory by documenting the surprising extent caust was broadcast on television. Soon postwar moment to a reflection by the Holocaust and its legacies. On this day, and content of immigrant Holocaust thereafter Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah child of survivors to a more distanced they reported on their meetings with Jew- memory in contemporary Germany, which (1985) was released and an increased playing with the image of the Nazi. The ish and Sinti survivors of Nazi genocide, most scholars and the general public attention to Holocaust concerns has con- third section, “Burning Silence” tracks Brett Ashley Kaplan received her Ph.D. from their visits to memorial sites commemo- have until now overlooked. Each chapter tinued unabated ever since. In all three shifts in Holocaust representations in the Rhetoric Department at the University of rating the Holocaust, and the effects of Citizens of Memory explores how un- sections we can see that by the early Coetzee’s work to mirror our changing California, Berkeley. She is an Associate Pro- these encounters had on them. The expected performances of memory and 2000s there is a different sensibility relationship to this trauma. From the begin- fessor in the Program in Comparative and World event culminated with the screening of creative acts of citizenship emerge in the The cover of the DVD “Es ist auch meine Geschichte”: Stadtteilmütter auf regarding the Holocaust. There is either ning Coetzee has been invested in the Literature and the Program in Jewish Culture Aus unserer Sicht [From Our Perspective], friction between national contexts and den Spuren des Nationalsozialismus a sense, as indicated by the presence of Holocaust and its ramifications for the ever & Society. Her books are Unwanted Beauty: a film the women had made about their migrant subjects. [“It’s also My History”: The Neighbor- visit to Auschwitz. This lively, charged, the hotel on the Obersalzberg discussed changing South African present. In his early Aesthetic Pleasure in Holocaust Representation hood Mothers Explore the Traces of in section one, of moving on or forgetting, works the Holocaust appears as a shadow, (2007) and Landscapes of Holocaust Postmem- and deeply emotional gathering received To understand the particular significance National Socialism]. Courtesy of Aktion or, as in the work of Collier Schorr (sec- as a trembling below the surface, only ory, which was published by Routledge in 2011. hardly any coverage in the local press, of these issues in the German context, Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste e.V. 16 Program in Jewish Culture & Society • Research Research • Program in Jewish Culture & Society 17

much smaller number of refugees from adhere to German cultural pieties. Rather, other primarily Islamic communities, such immigrants who address Nazism and the as Palestinians and Bosnians. Because legacies of the Holocaust in their cultural the introduction of the category “Muslim” productions or in their activism do so pri- has intensified the discourse around marily in order to locate their own place (Turkish) immigrants’ relationship to in relation to a national past marked German society and culture, we put it in by genocidal violence towards groups the center of our investigation, while at marked as other. As Turkish-German writ- the same time critically remarking on the ers Zafer Şenocak and Bülent Tulay ask, obfuscating effects this categorization “Doesn’t immigrating to Germany also Michael Rothberg & Yasemin Yildiz can have on immigrants’ heterogeneous mean immigrating into Germany’s recent self-identifications and practices. past?” Frequently, and in yet another reflected on the Holocaust as a taking off Muslims in the West, our book will dem- Neighborhood Mothers Memduha Yağlı (left) and Hanadi Mourad (right) meet with Holocaust unanticipated twist elucidated by our proj- point for considering the history of the onstrate the ways many such immigrants survivor Margot Friedlander. Courtesy of Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste e.V. Our preliminary research has already ect, this engagement comes in the form Armenian genocide, a genocide officially actively participate in their new societies; furnished us with numerous examples of questioning complicity and address- denied in Turkey itself. Zafer Şenocak’s it will specifically interrogate the growing countries and Vietnam, “repatriated” integration is supposed to occur and of immigrants grappling with the history ing perpetration, rather than imagining novel Gefährliche Verwandschaft [Peril- presumption of Muslim antisemitism and ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe through which immigrants can come to of Nazism and the Holocaust in a variety immigrants as victims analogous to Jews ous Kinship], for instance, features a Holocaust denial. Integrating material and Central Asia, Russian-Jewish im- identify with their new country. As a result, of arenas, including community activism, under the Nazis. narrator who is a descendant of German- until now considered outside the purview migrants from the former Soviet Union, immigrants to Germany have had to invent novels, essays, and performances. This Jewish Holocaust survivors on the one of Holocaust studies, Citizens of Memory and refugees from all over the world as such narratives for themselves. Engaging research led us, for example, to Per la Immigrants’ active memory work concern- side and a Turkish official involved in the will provide a new account of Holocaust well as the descendants of all these with the German national past, we contend, Vita, a musical collaboration between Es- ing the Holocaust has taken unforeseen Armenian genocide on the other. Such remembrance in the German context. groups. Although German citizenship law has been one such creative and politically ther Bejarano, an 85-year old Auschwitz directions that build on this question- transferred memory work indicates a truly changed in 2000 from a model of “blood” significant way for immigrants to situate survivor, and Microphone Mafia, an ing of complicity and perpetration. One transnational and multidirectional circula- and inheritance (jus sanguinis) to a themselves in the new country. tion of cultural memory. immigrant hip hop group. It also led us provocative example is provided by the Michael Rothberg is Professor of English and modified version of “birthright citizenship” to Doğan Akhanlı, an exiled Turkish writer Turkish-German performer and comedian Director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, (jus soli), a notion of German ethnicity In order to foreground the most resonant We believe that the conjunction of and activist who, on his own initiative, Serdar Somuncu. Somuncu has toured and Memory Studies at the University of Illinois. remains central to the understanding of and surprising points of contact between Muslim immigrants and Holocaust began to offer Turkish-language guided Germany since the late 1990s with a He is the author of Traumatic Realism: The national belonging in the Federal Republic immigration in contemporary Germany remembrance in Germany constitutes tours through the Cologne Museum of the performance in which he adopts what Demands of Holocaust Representation (2000) and has exclusionary implications for and cultural memory of the Holocaust, a particularly illuminating angle for the History of National Socialism. Rich mate- Katrin Sieg calls “ethnic drag” to present and Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the many immigrants. Discussions about Citizens of Memory focuses especially study of cultural memory, since it show- rial of this sort provides new insights and comment on texts by Hitler and Goeb- Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (2009). German cultural memory, meanwhile, on the memory work of Turkish-German into the nature of cultural memory, we bels in the vein of Charlie Chaplin’s Great cases memory production and trans- Yasemin Yildiz is an Assistant Professor of continue to posit an ethnically homoge- immigrants. Arriving on the heels of a argue: memory is not the “natural” result Dictator and Brecht’s Arturo Ui. Reading mission by subjects clearly not linked Germanic Languages and Literatures affiliated neous Germany. 1961 labor recruitment agreement, Turk- of cultural belonging and citizenship, as from Mein Kampf, a work whose circula- genealogically to the histories with which with the Program in Jewish Culture & Society, ish Germans have comprised the largest is often assumed, but the very means tion is strictly controlled in Germany, they are engaged. By focusing particularly the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Yet the German denial of immigration’s ethnic minority in the country since the through which cultural and political af- Somuncu seeks to undo the power of on the memory work of immigrants cast Studies, and the Gender and Women’s Studies transformative impact on the country has 1970s. Currently numbering roughly filiation is negotiated. Memory, in other Nazi rhetoric through mimicry and satiri- as Muslim our book will also address Department. Her new book is called Beyond also created conditions under which new 2-3 million (out of 82 million residents), words, is a site of citizenship broadly cal commentary. In these performances, current controversies about antisemitism the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual memorial cultures could flourish. Since Turkish Germans have come to figure as understood and a means of creating what which have provoked angry responses and Islamophobia. To be sure, not all Condition (2011). labor migrants—the so-called “guest German society’s primary Others and the political theorist Seyla Benhabib has from neo-Nazis, Somuncu confronts the immigrants are deeply engaged with

workers”—were expected to return to have been marginalized in mainstream called “new modalities of membership” continuing affective force of Nazi rhetoric, the Holocaust and the German past; Andrés Nader is an independent scholar based their countries of origin, no approach was society and culture. Most significantly, in heterogeneous, multicultural societies. which he suggests needs to be deflated some are no doubt even antisemitic (a in Berlin and the author of Traumatic Verses: developed for their integration. This has in the course of the past decade these by ridicule rather than locked away. In a tendency that can be found, to some Poetry in German from the Concentration meant that in contrast to a country such “Turks” have been recast as “Muslims” The main concern of the immigrant further striking and unexpected example degree, across German society). Without Camps, 1933-1945 (2010). Together, Rothberg, as the United States, no master narrative in dominant discourses. Signaling the memory work that we have so far uncov- of the productive intersection of immigra- minimizing such realities, we seek Yildiz, and Nader won a 2011-2012 ACLS about immigration to Germany exists that worldwide salience of religious discourse, ered is neither to respond to society’s tion and cultural memory, a number nevertheless to tell a less familiar story. Collaborative Research Fellowship from the would lay out the ideal path along which this recasting has linked them with the demands on them to “integrate” nor to of Turkish-German intellectuals have Against the presumed non-integration of American Council of Learned Societies. 18 Program in Jewish Culture & Society • Students Initiatives • Program in Jewish Culture & Society 19

Meet Our Students – ZIA MIRIC RACHEL S. HARRIS REPORTS ON THE THRIVING HEBREW LITERATURE SERIES OF DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS

trant traces of social discrimination and networks of belonging. In the literary and now that one can’t properly come to Like the jazz of Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker cultural prejudice in the decades between arena, majority British culture articulated terms with contemporary writing without which saturates every aspect of this text, the Catholic Emancipation (1829) and both millennialist and imperialist visions seeing it in an international context.” the book encapsulates the essence of the Aliens Act (1905), as reflected in of Albion’s Zion, either in Palestine (and, two other art forms, music and painting. and informed by literary representations, by extension, the British empire), or in Since its publication in English Life on Defying each literary convention – plot, recent studies have emphasized that Brit- Britain redeemed from corrupting influ- Sandpaper has garnered critical acclaim narrative, character development - it ish Jews were neither ghettoized nor the ences of global modernity. By contrast, for its unusual style. In its very opening, becomes a series of vignettes through silent objects of anti-Semitic discourses. Jewish writers confounded this stark the “Author’s Note” destabilizes the which Kaniuk has composed literature as binarism with competing varieties of con- autobiographical expectations for the music. Each character becomes a kind In my dissertation, “The Crisis of all flicted Zionisms: territorialist, diasporist, reader: “It isn’t entirely incorrect to call of theme, weaving in and out of the text, Nations”: Cosmopolitanism, National- socialist, and Greater British. From the this book a work of fiction, despite its there for a moment, recognizable then ism, and the Emergence of Anglo-Jewish British perspective, Jews were separate being an account of my memories from evaporating or synthetizing with a new dif- Literary Zionism (1789-1917), I read in time, space, or ideology; from the Jew- a certain period of my life, and despite ferent and sudden refrain, only to appear Daniel Deronda had been my best friend nineteenth-century British Jewish ish viewpoint, Jews interconnected with the fact that many of its characters might again unexpectedly. The narrator remains for a while before I was introduced to literature in its historical and geopolitical both their co-nationals in the countries also appear in history books concern- forever just out of grasp, unpredictable Judith Quixano and Raphael Leon, thanks context, and in formal and thematic con- of residence and other Jews in the global ing those same years.” In so doing, the and elusive. to Susan David Bernstein and Meri-Jane versation with mainstream literary texts. diaspora. They were thus relevant to both Life on Sandpaper is Yoram Kaniuk’s book challenges our notions and beliefs Rochelson’s critical editions of Reuben Both minority and majority cultures were British culture and society, as well as fictional autobiography. The oxymoronic about biographical writing which is further Kaniuk’s representations of Marlon Sachs and Children of the Ghetto. In the transformed in this bi-directional traffic of international solidarity and progress. impossibility of this statement speaks compounded by the literary style of Brando, Frank Sinatra, Billy Holiday, nineteenth-century British republic of patterns and ideas, so that the very con- to the very essence of the book, the the entire book. As many reviews have Stanley Kubrik, the original cast of West letters, dominated by the sovereign can- cepts of Britishness and Jewishness were In the process of research into the series to which it belongs, and the press claimed, it seems incoherent to present Side Story, his wives, James Dean, Yul onicity of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, continuously questioned and redefined. complexity of literary articulations of that publishes it. This is the third of a narrative synopsis for a book with Brynner, Dylan Thomas, Leonard Bern- Charlotte Brontë, and Anthony Trollope, British Jewish writers were integrated in cultural and political dimensions of five books so far published by Dalkey no traditional linear narrative – yet the stein, Miles Davis, Ginger Rogers, Avi not less resonant were the until recently the local, national and global networks of the idea of Zion and Zionist practice, Archive Press in the Hebrew Literature in book is an account of a man’s arrival in Shoes, as well as a Jewish nun turned forgotten voices of Grace Aguilar, Benjamin literary production, dissemination, and I have apprehended the significance of Translation Series. This small indepen- New York City, the women he slept with, drug smuggler, Carole, who built a Farjeon, Amy Levy, and Israel Zangwill. reception. They increasingly turned from the trope of Eastern Europe in British dent publishing house brings out around the people he met, and the decade he synagogue in the jungle, or an H M Bialik compartmentalized writing for separate culture and its determinant inflection two dozen modern and contemporary spent there painting, starting in 1952. aficionado in Laramie Wyoming, to name Bookended by two epoch-making revolu- audiences to addressing multiple reader- of Orientalist discourse as it affected books of fiction a year, a mixture of During that time he travelled through but a few of the characters who appear, tions that both promised and betrayed ships in complex works negotiating dis- and involved Jews. With the “invasion of reprints and new works. Their mission is America, became deeply enmeshed in suggests a contradictory ambiguity that the ideals of liberty and justice, the long sonant, sometimes clashing, discourses pauper aliens” (1881-1905), it became to ensure that great literature is kept in the Bohemian arts scene in New York is deeply profound: the insignificance nineteenth century (1789–1917) was and forms. Themes and genres that were clear that Eastern European Jewishness print regardless of commercial success. and married twice. Small pictures and of the life of a single man and the great also transformative for British Jewry. considered quintessentially “Jewish” or represented the limit of legal and cultural Described as Avant-Garde, experimental, complex winding murals of the famous, impact that a single moment of that life Paradoxically, on the parallel tracks of “English” were adapted or cross-pollinated: admissibility. Eastern European Jews and innovative, press founder and Editor- the infamous, and the irrelevant pervade can have on others. British patriotism and Jewish national- historical romance and urban realism, brought with them not only the “Other” in-Chief John O’Brien chooses the epithet the pages of this book, alongside descrip- ism, they sustained the intricate balance scholarly essays and travel writing, met- European and the “Other” Jew, but also “subversive” to describe a unified principle tions of his own paintings, yet the true The novel’s absence from Israel’s state between universal ideals and particular ropolitan and imperial scenes, as well as the “Other” Zion and an “alien” Orient. underlying those books chosen for publi- mastery of this text lies not in its content building years, and Kaniuk’s apparent claims in the cosmopolitan ethos. One biblical and diasporic narratives. Ultimately, while Jewish colonizers as cation; books that make a difference. but in its presentation. Kaniuk provides lack of contact with home suggests, specificity of the British context of Jewish British citizens worked in the service of a counter-narrative through his refusal to at first glance, an alienation from the modernization was incremental integra- The figure of Anglo-Zions as cultural the British empire, “foreign” Zionists Around 50% of the books published by belong. He is the white guy dishwasher traditional formative narratives about tion, the gradual process of securing full discourse and point of economic-political were perceived as infringing on imperial the press are translations, and the Hebrew in Minton’s, a nightclub in Harlem; he Israel, Sabras, and Zionism. Yet Kaniuk economic, political, and civil rights and mobilization is one particularly illuminat- integrity and compromising patriotic Literature series is part of the press ideol- hates American abstract impressionism captures the quintessential spirit of what freedoms in stages over the course of the ing angle to approach the conundrum of British identity. ogy to “to break down the artificial barriers when it is the dominant art form; and he it means to be, and to live as, an Israeli Victorian era. While earlier scholarship nationalism and cosmopolitanism in the that exist among countries and cultures.” leaves Israel precisely at a time of mass wherever he may find himself. has extensively documented recalci- configuration of imperial and diasporic As O’Brien states, “It was my view then immigration to the new State. 20 Program in Jewish Culture & Society • Initiatives Initiatives • Program in Jewish Culture & Society 21

Though not set in Israel, the experience works take centre stage. Celebrated for of being an Israeli Jew in America shapes their innovative literary creativity these world’s foremost scholars of medieval assistant, Ms. Karen Olson, was the development at the library, is not yet com- the novel, becoming another motif in books reshape the conventions and ex- Spanish literature, my colleague Sam final reader of all the transcriptions. She plete, it can be accessed at http://quest. the symphony. His experience of being pectations of Israeli literature for English- Armistead, as its devoted custodian and also added all the necessary metadata, grainger.uiuc.edu/FLSJ/FLSJ. I would like wounded in the 1948 War of Indepen- speaking audiences. Since April 2010, researcher. Professor Armistead quickly including the names of the informants, to offer a personal word of gratitude to dence, his encounters with those who when Dalkey published Eshkol Nevo’s agreed when I suggested that we apply the details of the recording event, and all the folks at the library who have made are surprised to meet an Israeli – their Homesick which explores the relation- for a grant when the second round of the any identifying features of the song that this possible: Thomas Habing, Sarah first, or other Israelis in their travels, ship between the places in which we live NSF Digitial Library Initiative was opened Professor Armistead had noted. I took the Shreeves (Assoc. Professor, Library Ad- even his attempts to run an Israeli style and our sense of home, the series has in 1998. He saw this not only as an op- transcriptions and, using software that I ministration), and Beth Sandore Namach- restaurant and later frozen falafel busi- published the best of Israeli literature, portunity to preserve his material in per- wrote, processed them into the standard- chivaya (Associate University Librarian for ness, remind us of the particularity of including Orly Castel-Bloom’s Dolly City, petuity, but also to provide lay people and ized format known as Text Encoding Initia- IT Policy and Planning). Kaniuk’s experience. Nevertheless there a powerful post-modern meditation on scholars everywhere with an opportunity tive (TEI) markup. I designed and wrote is a duality that Kaniuk conveys clearly Zionism and Motti by Assaf Schurr which to listen to and study some of the most the software for the website that would I think it would be presumptuous of me to at the book’s close “if you go and come plays with the sense of narrative and amazing oral literature the world pos- allow these transcriptions to appear as describe the content of the Folk Literature back after some time, you’ll be a map experiential perspective in the unequal sesses. Sam Armistead is one of those web pages in HTML format and to be of the Sephardic Jews website when of the city that once was … you’ll carry friendship between two men, the willing- Rachel S. Harris is Assistant Professor of scholars whose love of their subject in searched for words and phrases. The digi- Professor Armistead himself has taken away a city that won’t exist in your head!” ness to sacrifice, and the importance of Comparative Literature and Jewish Studies at not a jealous love. His faithfulness to the talized recordings were able to be played the trouble to write an introduction to the (416) But finally, despite the richness a dog. June 2011 saw the publication of the University of Illinois, where she teaches Is- legacy of the informants he recorded, all while the viewer followed along and read website. I will therefore simply provide of his experiences and the love of New Gavriella Avigur-Rotem’s Heatwave and raeli literature and culture. Previously she was of whom have now passed away, impelled the transcription. Over the last decade, I an excerpt of his valuable overview of York that saturates the entire biography, Crazy Birds, the story of an air steward- Assistant Professor of Hebrew Literature and him to open his archive to the world, and maintained this website on a computer in the nature of the oral literature we have Kaniuk returns to Israel and understands ess returning to Israel to confront her Language at the University at Albany (SUNY). I was privileged to be the person who my home office until, just this spring, the made available: that he’s come home. home and her past. For me, reading Her research interests include the role of facilitated its technological achievement. University of Illinois library agreed to take modern Hebrew literature demands only suicide in Israeli literature on which she wrote Over three years, I supervised the work over responsibility for hosting the multi- Ballads are seemingly very simple po- Kaniuk’s novel, like the other works pub- that we find books which subvert our her doctorate at the University of Oxford. She is of a half a dozen graduate students in media digital library on its own server. ems; we like to say this is “primitive” po- lished in the series, attempts to redefine expectations and open our mind. series editor for Dalkey Archive Press’s Hebrew Spanish and numerous bilingual under- While the work of getting the website up etry, the poetry of country bumpkins and our notion of Israeli literature. Non-canonic Literature in Translation Series. graduates as they transcribed and edited and running, which is being undertaken rural illiterates; but, actually, these are all the tapes. Sam Armistead’s editorial by Thomas Habing, manager of software very complex things, their intertextuality, their resonances with innumerable other songs in the same regional repertoire, BRUCE ROSENSTOCK ON THE NEW HOME FOR THE are surprisingly intricate. And they are also very successful poetic creations in FOLK LITERATURE OF THE SEPHARDIC JEWS WEBSITE their own right. So ballads are very much Over a decade ago, Professor Samuel his colleagues Joseph Silverman (Span- reel tapes. These tapes were in danger a world unto themselves and not, initially, Armistead (Spanish, University of Cali- ish, University of California at Santa Cruz, of decomposition and badly needed to be easily understood. Nor are they fornia at Davis) and I were the Principal d. 1989) and Israel J. Katz, collected digitalization. And the material on the to be taken lightly. They concern, once Investigators on a grant that was one in field trips to Sephardic communities tapes represented a Jewish and Hispanic you capture their drift, an impressively of only a few humanities projects to be around the world, in North America, the cultural treasure unequalled in the rich- diverse, astoundingly wide range of hu- awarded multi-year funding (in the amount Balkans, Greece, Turkey, North Aftrica, ness and variety of its ballads and other man experiences and emotions, covering of $500,000) from the National Science and Israel. Their informants, unfortunate- song types, some going back hundreds of everything from the very best, the most Foundation Digitial Library Initiative. ly the last generation of Sephardic Jews years before 1492. Another collection of noble, the most heroic sentiments to the Our project involved the digitalization, to have inherited from their parents an Sephardic oral literature sits in the vaults most ominous and the most hateful: So transcription, and website creation for unbroken tradition of ballad singing since of the Kol Israel radio station in Tel Aviv, we have ballads of steadfast love and the unique collection of oral folk literature their ancestors were expelled from Spain but our collection was just as large, and devotion, of total fidelity, but also of the Sephardic Jews in Amsterdam that, over forty years, Sam Armistead and in 1492, were recorded on large reel-to- had the advantage of having one of the most blatant infidelity; we have ballads of 22 Program in Jewish Culture & Society • Initiatives Giving • Program in Jewish Culture & Society 23

1650. Joe was particularly interested in embodies just under 1500 ballad texts, Spain’s Jewish heritage. representing some 190 different narra- Donors Make a Difference! tive types, sung or recited by Sephardic The Program in Jewish Culture and Society is fortunate to have a group of dedicated supporters. The result of our collaborative work has Jews from Bosnia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Year after year, they make our work possible – and we are so grateful to all of them! In addition, been, for me, a most enjoyable, indeed Greece, Turkey, Israel, and Morocco. some of our most committed friends have recently made substantial gifts that have allowed us to a thoroughly marvelous--international-- The collection also includes abundant establish endowments that will sustain our work in perpetuity. Here are the inspiring details! adventure. From 1957 through 1960, we examples of other traditional genres: lyric explored the Sephardic immigrant com- poetry, folktales, proverbs, and riddles. munities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York. These American Professor Armistead has now published Sephardic communities consisted, seven volumes in a projected twenty- Samuel Armistead mostly, of immigrants from the Balkans volume series, Folk Literature of the amorous adventures and erotic fantasies and the Eastern Mediterranean. But the Sephardic Jews. Although he is not and also of the tragic misfortunes of Judeo-Spanish language and Judeo-Span- Jewish, he always invokes the presence unrequited love; we have ballads of the ish oral literature have also survived in a of the Shekhinah as the explanation for husband’s return from war or from captiv- number of communities in North Africa--in his continued vigor (he is now over eighty ity; of the unfortunate, mistreated wife; Morocco and in Algeria. So, if our collec- and continues full-time teaching) as he of the evil mother-in-law; of tricks and de- tion was to be truly representative, we continues to finish his life’s work of mak- Scott Gendell ceptions; of treachery and betrayal; and would also have to go to North Africa. ing this Sephardic treasure available to of other, darker things still: of rape and future scholars and students. abduction; incest and infanticide; murder, And this we did: In 1962, the three of Doug Hoffman

mayhem, and bloody vengeance. Such us spent a summer in Morocco, visiting Gary Porton topics and such characteristics are, of every one of the Hispano-Jewish com- course, shared by Hispanic ballads with munities: seven towns in all. In 1963, I the ballad traditions of other European returned alone to Morocco to do further peoples and to explore these neglected, field work. pan-European relationships has also been very much a part of our project. There remained also the challenge of The Gary Porton Fund was In 1957, I left Princeton to accept a investigating how the ballad tradition (and established in 2008 as well. position as Instructor at UCLA. On arrival the language) had survived in Israel. In It was created by Doug Hoffman to honor the legacy of his in Los Angeles, I met Joseph Silverman, 1978, the three of us traveled to Israel, teacher, Gary Porton, the first Professor of Judaism in the Reli- who was also teaching in the Spanish visiting eight different communities and gion Department. Gary’s distinguished career at Illinois spanned 35 Department. My training at Princeton collecting over two hundred texts and years and continues to be an inspiration to all of us in the Program in was in Medieval Spanish literature and fragments of Judeo-Spanish traditional Bruce Rosenstock is the Associate Director of The Rosenthal Family Endowment was created in Jewish Culture & Society (which was, in fact, co-founded by him). The in Comparative Romance Linguistics. Joe ballads, as well as other forms of folk the Program in Jewish Culture & Society and 2009 by Lorelei Rosenthal to support a bi-annual proceeds from the endowment are earmarked to support the research Silverman was a specialist in Renais- literature, which were, of course, also col- Associate Professor in the Department of Reli- lecture in German- and Habsburg-Jewish Studies. of Gary’s successor at Illinois – our new colleague Dov Weiss. sance and Classical Spanish literature, lected during our previous field trips. gion at the University of Illinois. He has written We were thrilled to welcome Barbara Hahn, the covering the period roughly from 1500 to In all, our Sephardic collection now numerous articles on such topics as ancient leading scholar of German-Jew- The Vivian Marcus Memorial Lecture Fund philosophy, the Hebrew Bible, and Sabbatian- ish women’s literature, as the Barbara Hahn was established in 2011 to facilitate a bi- ism and is the author of New Men: Conversos, inaugural Rosenthal Family Lec- annual lecture. It was created by Annette Theology, and Society in Fifteenth-Century turer in 2010; and we greatly Turow in memory of her sister, Vivian Castile (2002) and Philosophy and the Jewish look forward to the visit by Amir Marcus. The first event will take place in Question: Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and Eshel, the foremost scholar of 2012/13. Stay tuned! Beyond (2009). He is about to publish the Holocaust poetry, in 2012. first English translation and commentary of Lorelei Rosenthal Annette Turow Mendelssohn’s Morgenstunden. 24 Program in Jewish Culture & Society • Faculty Courses • Program in Jewish Culture & Society 25

the Program in Jewish Culture & Society ANTHROPOLOGY The Holocaust and Its Meanings ANTH 161 Courses in Jewish Studies Listed below are the courses approved for Jewish Studies credit at the American Jewish Culture ANTH 190 University of Illinois. A selection of these courses is taught every academic year. The Staff The World of Jewish Sepharad ANTH 275 Matti Bunzl, Director Jewish Cultures of the World ANTH 290 Bruce Rosenstock, Associate Director Modern Europe ANTH 488 PHILOSOPHY Michael Rothberg, Director, Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies Craig Alexander, Assistant to the Director COMPARATIVE LITERATURE PHIL 230 Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion

Jewish Storytelling: From the Russian Shtetl to New York CWL 221 POLITICAL SCIENCE The Faculty Literary Responses to the Holocaust CWL 320 PS 347 Government and Politics of the Middle East Jewish Life-Writing CWL 421 RELIGION Eugene Avrutin* (History): European Jewish History; Jews of Imperial Russia Dale Bauer* (English): American Women’s Literature ENGLISH RLST 101 The Bible as Literature

Edward Bruner (Anthropology): Anthropology of Tourism; Jewish Travel Minority Images in American Film ENGL 272 RLST 106 Archaeology and the Bible Matti Bunzl* (Anthropology): Jews in the Modern World; Central Europe Modern Jewish Literature ENGL 284 RLST 108 Religion and Society in the West I Kenneth Cuno (History): History of the Middle East; Egypt Virginia Dominguez* (Anthropology): Anthropology of Peoplehood; Israel Jewish Immigrant Literature ENGL 363 RLST 109 Religion and Society in the West II Colin Flint (Geography): Political Geography; Geography of the Nazi Vote Literature of American Minorities ENGL 460 RLST 110 World Religions Peter Fritzsche (History): Twentieth-Century German History; Third Reich GERMAN RLST 116 Faith and Self in Global Context George Gasyna (Slavic): Polish Literature; Polish-Jewish Relations Vienna 1900 GER 257 RLST 120 A History of Judaism Dara Goldman* (Spanish): Hispanic Caribbean; Jews of the Caribbean Fred Gottheil (Economics): Economics of the Middle East; Israel The Holocaust in Context GER 260 RLST 130 Jewish Customs and Ceremonies

Alma Gottlieb (Anthropology): West Africa; Jews of Cape Verde HEBREW RLST 201 Hebrew Bible in English James Hansen (English): Britsh/Irish Modernism; Frankfurt School Undergraduate Open Seminar HEBR 199 RLST 221 American Judaism Dianne Harris (Landscape Architecture): Architecture; Suburbia and Assimilation Rachel Harris* (Comparative Literature): Hebrew Literature; Israeli Cultural Studies Elementary Modern Hebrew, I HEBR 201 RLST 235 History of Religion in America Javier Irigoyen-García (Spanish): Golden Age Spain Elementary Modern Hebrew, II HEBR 202 RLST 242 The Holocaust: Religious Responses Fred Jaher (History): History of Anti-Semitism; United States; France Intensive Biblical Hebrew HEBR 205 RLST 283 Jewish Sacred Literature Lilya Kaganovsky (Comparative Literature): Soviet Culture Intermediate Modern Hebrew, I HEBR 403 RLST 415 Introductory Readings of the Talmud Brett Kaplan* (Comparative Literature): Holocaust Representation in Art and Literature Yore Kedem (Religion): Hebrew Language Intermediate Modern Hebrew, II HEBR 404 RLST 416 Readings in Rabbinic Midrash

Harry Liebersohn (History): European Intellectual History Advanced Modern Hebrew, I HEBR 405 RLST 442 History of Early Judaism Harriet Murav* (Comparative Literature): Russian- and Soviet-Jewish Writing; Yiddish Advanced Modern Hebrew, II HEBR 406 RLST 443 Ancient Near Eastern Cultures Cary Nelson (English): Modern American Poetry; Poetics of Anti-Semitism Topics in Modern Hebrew Language and Literature, I HEBR 407 Carl Niekerk (German): German Cultural History; Vienna 1900 RLST 458 Christians and Jews 1099-1789 Wayne Pitard* (Religion): History of Ancient Syria; Bible Topics in Modern Hebrew Language and Literature, II HEBR 408 RLST 496 Topics in the History of Judaism Gary Porton (Religion): Rabbinics; Judaism in Late Antiquity HISTORY RLST 498 Topics in Biblical Studies David Price (Religion): Jewish-Christian Relations in Early-Modern Europe History of the Islamic Middle East HIST 135 RUSSIAN Dana Rabin* (History): Early Modern British History; Minorities in British History Bruce Rosenstock* (Religion): Jewish Thought; Messianism in the Jewish Tradition The Holocaust HIST 252 RUSS 261 Introduction to Russian-Jewish Culture Emanuel Rota (Italian): European Intellectual History; Fascism Jewish History to 1700 HIST 268 RUSS 465 Russian-Jewish Culture Michael Rothberg* (English): Holocaust Representation; Holocaust and Postcoloniality Jewish History since 1700 HIST 269 YIDDISH Mahir Saul (Anthropology): West Africa; Sepharad Constructing Race in America HIST 281 YDSH 101 Elementary Yiddish, I Rhona Seidelman (Visiting Schusterman Professor): Israeli history; history of medicine Michael Shapiro (English): Shakespeare and the Jews The Middle East 1566-1914 HIST 335 YDSH 102 Elementary Yiddish, II

Marek Sroka (Library): Jewish Studies in Eastern Europe The History of the Jews in the Diaspora HIST 433 YDSH 103 Intermediate Yiddish, I Mara Wade (German): Early Modern German Literature The Middle East in the Twentieth Century HIST 437 YDSH 104 Intermediate Yiddish, II Terri Weisman (Art History): History of Photography Dov Weiss* (Religion): Biblical Interpretation, Rabbinic Literature, Jewish Thought Twentieth-Century Germany HIST 456 Yasemin Yildiz (German): German-Jewish literature; Holocaust Studies Immigrant America HIST 472

* Members of the Program in Jewish Culture & Society Executive Committee 26 Program in Jewish Culture & Society • Giving Giving • Program in Jewish Culture & Society 27

Abbott Fund Mrs. Carol P. Colby Mr. Burton Glazov Mr. Melvin Kupperman Mr. Edward J. Nadler Mr. and Mrs. Myron J. Sholem Mr. Seymour J. Abrams Community Foundation of Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey A. Gluskin Dr. and Mrs. Aaron Kurland Mr. and Mrs. Irving Naiditch Mrs. Yadelle T. Sklare Mr. Craig M. Alexander East Central Illinois Mr. Barry A. Goldberg Mr. and Mrs. Allen I. Kutchins Dr. Steven B. Nasatir Sklare Family Foundation American Israeli Mr. Lawrence Dalkoff Mrs. Selma E. Goldstein Mr. and Mrs. Joseph I. Lachman Mrs. Harriet B. Nathan Mr. Burt C. Skolnik Cooperative Enterprise Dr. Harvey DeBofsky, MD Mr. Sheldon F. Good Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Lachman National Philanthropic Trust Dr. Gayle R. Snitman-Rubin Mrs. Iris N. Anosov Mrs. Loretta K. Dessen Sheldon F. Good Dr. Gilbert Lanoff Mr. Jeffrey A. Nemetz Mr. Michael B. Solow Mrs. Adrienne S. Antman Mr. and Mrs. Marvin J. Dickman Charitable Foundation Dr. and Mrs. Jules H. 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Einhorn Hackberry Endowment Partners Mr. and Mrs. Stanley R. Levy Dr. Stuart J. Perlik, MD, JD Mr. Howard L. Stone Senator Arthur L. Berman and Dr. and Mrs. Henry A. Einhorn Prof. and Mrs. Heini Halberstam Mr. and Mrs. Laurence Lieberman Polk Brothers Foundation Mrs. Blanche J. Sudman Mrs. Barbara G. Berman Mr. and Mrs. Irwin M. Eisen Dr. Michael R. Halpern Mrs. Eunice Lieberstein Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Pollack Dr. Edward E. Sullivan Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Berman Mr. and Mrs. Steven J. Erlebacher Mr. and Mrs. Max L. Harris Mr. and Mrs. Gary Lindon Prof. Gary G. and Mrs. Fraeda Porton Dr. and Mrs. Martin A. Swerdlow Ms. Eve Simon Biller and Mr. Sidney and Mrs. Sondra Epstein Mr. Gerold Hecktman Mr. Zachary T. Lindon Mr. Sander M. Postol Mr. and Mrs. Edward P. Tepper Mr. Richard Biller Ernsteen Family Foundation Mrs. Ruth S. Herzog Dr. Phyllis S. Loeff, MD Mr. Selwin E. Price Mr. amd Mrs. Ben D. Tobor Mrs. Freda S. Birnbaum Mr. and Mrs. Joseph E. Ernsteen Mr. Joel S. Hirsch Mr. Michael L. Lowenthal Ms. Dana Rabin Dr. and Mrs. Ronald Toby Mr. and Mrs. Sol Bleiweis Mr. and Mrs. Edward S. Ex Mr. Rick S. Hiton Mr. Jonathan S. Lustig Mr. and Mrs. Maurice P. Raizes Dr. Eliot M. Tokowitz Mr. and Mrs. Irwin J. Blitt Mr. Glenn Feher Mr. Douglas H. Hoffman and Mr. Judd D. Malkin Mr. and Mrs. Richard Reinisch Ms. Annette Turow Mr. and Mrs. Neal J. Block Mr. and Mrs. Steven A. Felsenthal Dr. Rebecca S. Hoffman Dr. and Mrs. Lee A. Malmed Mrs. Lois E. Ringel Mr. and Mrs. Neal R. Tyson Mr. and Mrs. Arnold F. Brookstone Mr. and Mrs. Maury L. Fertig Ms. Judith N. Hoffman Mrs. Lynne Marcus Dr. Arthur R. Robinson Mr. Billy K Vaughn and Prof. Matti Bunzl Mr. and Mrs. Edward M. Bruner M & N Fertig Family Foundation Dr. and Mrs. Irwin D. Horwitz Mr. Stephen A. Marcus Mrs. Rosalind Roniss Dr. Linda Wagner-Weiner, MD Dr. Nancy S. Burk Mr. Lawrence I. Field Tem Horwitz Mr. Donald Margolis Mr. and Mrs. Sherman D. Rosen Mr. David L. Waitz Mr. and Mrs. Jack I. Burnstein Mr. and Mrs. Ronald H. Filler Mr. Theodore Hymowitz Mr. and Mrs. Gary A. Margolis Mr. Michael A. Rosenbaum Mr. and Mrs. Barry A. Weiner Dr. Michael Cahill Mr. Robert M. Fishman Jewish Federation of Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey H. Margolis Mr. and Mrs. Lester J. Rosenberg Mr. and Mrs. Richard L. Wellek Mr. and Mrs. Cesare Caldarelli Mr. Peter J. Fleisher Metropolitan Chicago Mr. and Mrs. Scott E. Margolis Mr. and Mrs. Paul Rosenblum Mr. and Mrs. Kalman Wenig Champaign-Urbana Mr. and Mrs. Duncan M. Forsythe Dr. Bruce R. Kaden Margolis Family Foundation Mrs. Lorelei G. Rosenthal Dr. and Mrs. Samuel S. Wexler Jewish Federation Mr. and Mrs. Michael E. Fox Mr. and Mrs. William B. Katz Mr. and Mrs. David Alan Marks Mrs. Donald I. Roth Mr. and Mrs. Bruce White The Chicago Community Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Jay L. Frankel Dr. and Mrs. Sidney E. Kaz Mr. Howard S. Marks Mr. Ronald T. Rubin Mr. Steven W. Wolf Chicago Community Trust Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence M. Friedman Dr. Harold A. Kessler Mr. and Mrs. Steven S. Mason The Rubin Family Foundation Dr. Paul J. Zlotnik The Clearing Corporation Mr. and Mrs. Sy Frolichstein Mr. William Knapp Dr. Edward Matthew Mr. and Mrs. Roger D. Rudich Dr. Alan M. Zunamon Charitable Foundation Dr. Gilbert Gavlin Dr. Michael S. Korey Mr. Mark A. Mendelson Dr. and Mrs. Michael Shapiro Mr. and Mrs. Jason A. Cohan Gavlin Family Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Kozoll Mr. Robert Metzger Sheffield Square Dental Care Mr. Samuel Theodore Cohen Mr. Scott Hugh Gendell Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Kramer Mr. Charles J. Meyers Mr. and Mrs. Gerald J. Sherman Mr. Sheldon B. Cohen Dr. and Mrs. William Gingold Mr. Herbert M. Kraus Dr. David Mutchnik Mr. Lawrence A. Sherman Mr. and Mrs. Richard G. Cohn Jr. Mr. Jerome J. Ginsburg Mrs. Adrianne Kriezelman Dr. Adolph R. Nachman Mr. William A. Shiner Don0rs We are proud to thank the donors to the Program in Jewish Culture & Society. Without their support, none of our efforts would be possible. 28 Program in Jewish Culture & Society • Giving

Endowments

Oscar and Rose Einhorn Fund In Memoriam Supports an Annual Lecture

Ronald Filler Endowment Fund Supports a Scholarship for a Jewish Studies Minor Tragically, we lost two members of the Program in Jewish Culture & Society in the summer of 2011. Their passing is a terrible loss for the entire campus community. Gendell Family and Shiner Family Fund Supports a Graduate Student Fellowship

Samuel and Sheila Goldberg Lectureship Fund Supports an Annual Lecture David Goodman Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures Karasik Scholarship Fund Supports Scholarships and Other Program Needs David Goodman was a pioneering scholar in the study of modern Japanese theatre, especially of avant-garde theater in post-war Japan, who published numerous books on Krouse Family Visiting Scholars in Judaism and Western Culture Fund Supports a Bi-Annual Visiting Professorship the subject. In addition, he was the foremost expert on the image of Jews in Japan. The author of the definitive book on the subject, Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Vivian Marcus Memorial Lecture Fund: Uses of a Cultural Stereotype (1995), he also taught courses in which he and his students Supports a Bi-Annual Lecture examined the inter-cultural relationship between Japanese, Jewish, and American culture. Gary Porton Fund He was a frequent participant in the events organized by the Program in Jewish Culture & Supports the Research of a Scholar of Judaism in the Department of Religion Society, raising the quality of every conversation with his sharp mind and subtle wit.

Rosenthal Family Endowment Supports a Bi-Annual Lecture in German- and Habsburg-Jewish Studies Tobor Family Endowed Professorship in Jewish Studies Fund Lawrence Schehr Supports the Research of a Scholar of European-Jewish History in the Department of History Professor in the Department of French

Lawrence Schehr was a prolific scholar of 19th and 20th-century French literature, Advisory Council of the Program in who specialized on questions of realism, embodiment, and sexuality. The work of Marcel Proust was a central touchstone for him, as were other writers, like Zola, Sartre, and Jewish Culture & Society Lyotard, who contributed much to French debates on the Jewish question. He was an important supporter of the Program in Jewish Culture & Society during his tenure as Sheldon Cohen Daniel H. Lichtenstein Jennifer Rosenblum Associate Dean of the Humanities and was a key collaborator whenever the Program Carol Dragon Eunice Lieberstein Lorelei G. Rosenthal branched into the Francophone world, including the organization of a visit by Harvard Evelyn M. Edidin Judd D. Malkin Roger Rudich Professor Susan Suleiman which will take place in October 2011. David Egeland Jeffrey Margolis David Schwalb Steven Erlebacher Jennifer Oinounou Michael Shapiro Ronald Filler Keith Pascal Lawrence A. Sherman Noah Frank Gary Porton William Shiner Scott Gendell Daniel Rabishaw Gayle Snitman-Rubin Douglas H. Hoffman Maurice Raizes Spencer C. Stern Paul C. Krouse Sandy Raizes Annette Turow Bruce Lederman Richard Rice Laura B. White Burt Levy Program in Jewish Culture & Society in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

109 English Building 608 South Wright Street Urbana, IL 61801 Phone: 217.333.7978 Fax: 217.333.3624 [email protected] www.jewishculture.illinois.edu